Is This Me? A Broken Doll?
by Warriorsong
Summary: REVERSIONED. Poised at the moment of his triumph, Gendo is denied by the puppet he created to do his bidding and in doing so Rei realises her individuality as herself, and not as a composite of Yui and Lilith.


**Is This Me, A Broken Doll?**

R E V E R S I O N E D

A Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction

By Nicholas Paul Clark

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Ikari Gendo slowly raised his hands, his palm outwards, as if to halt her protestations. And then, at one hundred and eighty degrees from his body, it stopped. The gnarled reptilian foetus interwoven into his flesh, squirmed.

And then she froze. Intent, manifestation and aftermath flashed across her brain, making her start, as on the outside the hand slowly descended.

"Is this me?"

Dully it echoed. Raging back from some gargantuan steel box. Responding, its pitch increased, riding on sound, crashing once more.

"Is this me? Is this me?"

Side to side, it sang. Rivets popped and metal groaned as the echo of individuality rang. And the pitched changed, moving from the lucid questioning to the frantically demanding.

"Is this me? Is this me? Is this me?"

And as the metal reached its limit, driven by the pleading rhythm, it halted. It could be bent but not broken, and as it breathed its weary sigh, the steel box of her self strengthened its hold, and the sound crescendo-ed, slamming into itself hundreds of time over.

"No."

And it was then that she knew. Knew she could not bear this burden for him any longer, be a slave to their madness. And close to the beginning of completion, her breast pimpled as the hand moved within a hair's breadth of her nipple.

And the decision made, she found resolve.

"I am not your doll to control"

Gendo halted, taken aback by the revelation that he had never thought to hear. He had nurtured her, starved her of interaction, aiming to placate the human need for comfort and company, minus that he alone could provide. He had made her what she was, through deed and design. He cherished her. Not as an individual, as she was hollow, but as a means to an end. His end. His dream, her destiny.

Gendo took a step back, his hand, deprived of its goal, curled into a fist.

"Why?"

"I am not your doll."

Again, she spoke simply, without emotion, as he had made her, yet she spoke with a resolve he had long thought to have killed in her. That of free will, choice and the ability to deny him.

"This is your destiny Rei, what you were born for. Why deny what must be done? You know the world is dead, corrupt and in decay. Why stop now when you can become the vessel of its salvation."

She could do nothing but cringe. It was paradox. Destroy something to make it better; nothing could be fixed through annihilation. The fate of destruction would never become a joy. Rebirth was achieved through change and growth. Through the evolution of thought and form, not wholesale genocide.

"No."

Gendo, always the orator, the one with the calm response and cool manner, was at a loss. She could not refuse him. Not now, not so close. Yui was a heartbeat away; the quick motion of his arm was all that stood between him and his goal.

"Rei. I will not ask. This is your fate."

And here it was, in her face. The choice she had always known would come but the one she had never deemed to think on. That she could choose, make a definition between what he had planned for her and what she herself wanted. In essence, to decide and define who she was, rather than what he wanted her to be.

"I am not your doll. I do not wish to do as you would have me do."

With the emotionless tone and flat delivery she always used around others, and none of the joy and familial nuances she usually addressed him with, Gendo could she her resolve had solidified into something he could not sway.

"Incorrect." That was it, he would not be denied by a child. Not even a child he had created to end the world. "You will do as I see fit, First Child."

Barriers broken, he had cast aside the bond between them in one sentence. She could not see him as anything else now, but simply as an obsessed individual hell-bent on his own desires and goals at the cost of all else, even the fruit of the union he sought to resurrect.

"I refuse."

The hand moved forward, lunging towards its intended target, her womb, a black womb, one that would give birth to a desolate nothing that could only be called a whole, filled with everything and nothing.

She willed him to stop, placed a barrier between them, filling the void with the newly burgeoning hatred for his concept and the contempt for that which he would have her do.

Gendo halted, his hand moving through treacle, the faint lines of her blossoming AT field coalescing into being, wrapping his hand like a nebulus. His eyes widened as he looked up, into her eyes, blood red they were, totally, no whites to be seen. Skin peeled and rose from her body, disintegrating like soft ash as her power raged forth, burning away the inconsequential flesh.

"NO!" she screamed, the most emotion he had ever heard usher worth from her lips, and he realised his folly, that in making a god, he had also made a creature outside his will. Realised too late, as his outstretched arm severed at the elbow, the cauterized flesh burning away and the small foetus screaming into his mind as its life was drained away, this time forever. And as the expanded AT field of Rei Ayanami enfolded the dissipating spirit of Adam, the resultant blast, unshielded before Gendo, cast his body across the chamber of Terminal Dogma and embedded his broken shell into the wall some sixty metres behind.

Consciousness faded slowly, carried by the endorphins of pain as Gendo realised that despite his best efforts he was misguided. He was wrong and whatever salvation Yui had held for him was lost, just as he had lost the love of their son. And his last words were not what he had expected, those of greeting to his dead wife, but those of regret for his son, living but equally beyond his reach.

"Forgive me, Shinji."

The absolute terror field disintegrated and Rei fell to her knees, skin raw and weeping, naked. Before her the charred foetus of Adam mewed in her mind, calling for its mate, crucified beyond its reach. Rei gathered her mind, crushing the abomination within a pocket dimension.

Blood tears wept from her eyes as she slowly stood, her skin sticking to the bare metal floors. Stumbling she turned to the giant behind her, its face hidden behind the sealed mask bearing the insignia of SEELE.

Again she reached out with her mind, shattering the mask into a thousand pieces, raining metal down upon herself, the isolated sea of LCL and the slowly bobbing body of Ritsuko Akagi.

The face that greeted her was plain white, ghostly and uniform androgyny. As with the body the form was a commingling of masculine and feminine attributes, both creation and destruction. The face was stark yet soft, bearing a grace that almost crushed the resistance Rei cast into its gigantic will.

"Lilith." She spoke, low and shaky, yet easily heard by the being over the disparate sounds within the Geo-Front. "Adam is dead, mankind is in pain. We must help our children. Allow me to return home."

Silent agreement followed.

Rei stepped into nothingness, and slowly ascended towards her new destiny, gathering the gelatinous form as it came to her, making her whole once more, casting aside her worry and pain to replace it with a purpose she had never had in her hollow driven existence.

And as she stepped into the form before her, and completed herself, she realised the truth, that she wasn't alone, that she was a part of something. Not an Angel and yet not quite a human, but defined as human by form and now by will and deed. She was the counterpoint to Lilith, her antithesis and her progeny but also an aspect of the whole.

"Yes, my child. New."

The massive form melted off its iron nails, skin melding like wax to heal its wounds as it fell into the pool of link connect liquid at its feet, splashing the primordial elixir throughout the Chamber of Gauf, a menstrual flow into a dead womb.

Life again.

Throughout the world, visions of fear and joy filled the minds and hearts of the populace, nations and races, casting aside any inconsequential differences, stripping them down to the raw essence of being, what they were, naked before the will of the mother-daughter.

Judged, they fell into slumber, peaceful and waiting, knowing they had been given something but unsure what. Retaining form but understanding the need for none, as one and yet apart.

Judged, the forms dissolved casting into the yellowish ooze of LCL, but coagulating, casting into a dried pus before they combusted, their own soul lights casting them into a Dirac nothingness. Breaking them off from everything and nothing, leaving their tainted souls screaming in a void of nothingness. Alone and apart forever.

And before her, he stood, alone as he had thought he was always, yet armed with the knowledge it was his own choice to be as such. To live and let live as they saw fit, as he saw fit. To be, and not be as would happen by natural law. To awake from slumber as he was ready. To be as he would be. To be himself with no repercussions but those he placed upon himself. To simply be.

And as the bright crosses of the souls of the enlightened humanity dimmed, the sea of LCL beneath the Geo-Front was breached as the naked form of a fourteen year old girl, sunk under its waves. Her destiny fulfilled she lay before a path as yet untrodden. That of her own design. Not that of Gendo. Not that of Yui. Nor even that of Lilith and the Angels.

Her path alone. Her choice. Her life.

Rei Ayanami was free.

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Disclaimers

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Standard disclaimers apply. Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shinji Ikari and related characters were created by Hideki Anno, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and are copyright Project EVA, Gainax, NAS, Tokyo TV and ADV Films.

If any of this information is incorrect or absent, I offer my most humble apologies. No copyright infringement is intended, this is merely a work of fan fiction. I am in no way affiliated to any of these organizations, companies or individuals. Thank you for reading.

Finished 31st July 2003. By Nicholas Paul Clark (Warriorsong). Reversioned 9th January 2008. It's all about choice. Society exists to govern us and guide us not make our choices for us. Parents are there to guide their children and teach them not have them fulfil half forged dreams and stale ambitions they were unable to complete themselves. Rei chose to resist Gendo before his final violation of her existence, choosing herself to meld with her opposite, unburdened by the presence of Adam. If you want a more abstract view, look at it like this, man destroys, woman creates. This is very literal meaning death and birth (war and family) and by no means do I think this is as cut and dried as I have put it, but here it serves to illustrate my direction. Adam's presence destroyed the barriers of humanity's spirits (through fear – a negative psychological response), without it, it was realised as a natural progression (growth, a positive).


End file.
